Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū 養老奉親書
Book of Caring for the Elderly and Reverencing Parents by 陳直 Chén Zhí (fl. Yuánfēng 元豐 reign, 1078–1085), Northern Sòng official-physician, Magistrate (令) of Xīnghuà 興化 county in Tàizhōu 泰州.
About the work
The earliest extant Chinese monograph dedicated specifically to geriatric care (lǎorén yīxué 老人醫學). The work organises 233 entries across 15 piān 篇 covering dietary therapy (shízhì 食治), seasonal-adjustment regimen, and emergency interventions for elder-specific complaints. Its founding thesis — that for the aged “treatment by food is superior to treatment by drugs” (以食治疾，勝於用藥) — is grounded in the Sùwèn 素問 doctrine that elders are intolerant of purgatives and depletion. It is the textual ancestor of the much-better-known Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū 壽親養老新書 (KR3eo016 / KR3eo031, also at KR3e0021), into which 鄒鉉 Zōu Xuàn of the Yuán expanded it by adding three further juan.
Prefaces
The transmitted xù 序 opens by deriving the rationale for food-therapy of elders from the five-phase / yīnyáng logic of pharmacology: “The Sages distributed pharmaca to treat the various diseases because the Five Viscera root in the Five Phases, and the Five Phases have the principles of mutual generation and mutual overcoming. The protective and constructive [qì] root in yīn and yáng, and yīn and yáng have the principles of contrary and concordant flow. Therefore all the myriad things receive yīnyáng and the Five Phases when they come into being, and they have the five colours, the five tastes, hot and cold properties, and benevolent and toxic natures.” Chén goes on to argue that water- and land-foodstuffs likewise carry the same five-phase signature as drugs, and that “since the nature of the aged is universally averse to medicines and pleased with food, treating illness by food surpasses treating by drugs; the more so as for the diseases of the aged, vomiting and purging are to be guarded against, and food-treatment is especially appropriate.” The preface ends with Chén’s signature as 承奉郎前守泰州興化縣令陳直 (“Chéngfèngláng, formerly Magistrate of Xīnghuàxiàn in Tàizhōu, Chén Zhí presents”). The work draws explicitly on the Shíyī xīnjìng 食醫心鏡 (食醫心鏡), the Shíliáo běncǎo 食療本草 (食療本草), the Quánshí yàofǎ 詮食要法, the Zhūjiā fǎzhuàn 諸家法饌 (諸家法饌), and the food-therapy chapter of the Tàipíng shènghuì fāng 太平聖惠方 (太平聖惠方).
Abstract
The Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū was compiled by Chén Zhí during his Magistracy of Xīnghuàxiàn in Tàizhōu prefecture during the Yuánfēng era (1078–1085) of Sòng Shénzōng 神宗. Its received format is four juan, but the present jicheng.tw-reprinted recension transmits the work as a single fascicle preserving the xù, the 食治養老益氣方 (“food-therapy for nourishing elders and benefiting qì”) sub-section, and the principal prescriptive material. The work was the first Chinese geriatric monograph to treat the regimen of the aged as a discrete medical specialty, distinguishing it from general internal medicine on three principal grounds: (i) the elder constitution is yángxū 陽虛 (“yáng-depleted”) and therefore intolerant of vomiting and purging; (ii) dietary therapy must therefore precede pharmacotherapy; (iii) the seasonal-cosmological calendar mandates specific food and conduct regimens month by month. The treatise’s framework provided the template for the entire late-imperial yǎnglǎo genre.
The work survived the Sòng-Yuán transition only through the hands of 鄒鉉 Zōu Xuàn of Fùshā 富沙, who in the late Yuán (Dàdé 大德, 1297–1307) recompiled Chén Zhí’s four-juan original together with his own three additional juan into the Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū 壽親養老新書 — the Yuán Zhìzhèng 至正 (1341–1370) Zhèjiāng print of which is the textual basis transmitted into the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (KR3e0021). The original four-juan recension is also separately preserved in the jicheng.tw series as KR3eo016 Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo shū 壽親養老書. The present KR3eo001 is the streamlined jicheng.tw reprint of the Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū proper. The catalog meta gives no dynasty; the present record assigns 北宋 on the basis of Chén’s office title.
The work is cited in the Sòngshǐ · Yìwénzhì 宋史·藝文志 medical-prescription section (under Shízhì literature), in the Qīng Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要 (sub-category 子部·醫家類, where 紀昀 Jì Yún et al. evaluate the expanded Xīn shū and incidentally note the original four-juan form), and in modern Chinese medical-bibliographical surveys including Zhōngguó yījí dàcídiǎn 中國醫籍大辭典. The jicheng.tw reprint follows the editorial principles of the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū 海外回流中醫善本古籍叢書 under 鄭金生 Zhèng Jīnshēng.
Translations and research
- 鄭金生 et al. (eds.), Hǎi-wài huí-liú zhōng-yī shàn-běn gǔ-jí cóng-shū 海外回流中醫善本古籍叢書 (Běijīng: Rén-mín wèi-shēng chū-bǎn-shè, 2003).
- 陳直 / 鄒鉉, 《壽親養老新書》, ed. 趙惠玲 et al., Zhōng-yī gǔ-jí xiǎo cóng-shū 中醫古籍小叢書 (Tiān-jīn: Tiān-jīn kē-xué jì-shù chū-bǎn-shè, 1988).
- T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), chapter 4 on Sòng dietary and elder-care therapeutics.
- Christopher Cullen, “Patients and Healers in Late Imperial China: Evidence from the Yang’s Letters”, History of Science 31 (1993), 99–150 — for Sòng dietetic logic.
- Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.), Imagining Chinese Medicine (Leiden: Brill, 2018), essays on Sòng shí-zhì manuals.
Other points of interest
The work survives chiefly through Zōu Xuàn’s Yuán expansion; the recovery of the four-juan original through manuscripts repatriated from overseas (the foundation of the jicheng.tw series) is one of the principal philological events in the modern history of the yǎnglǎo literature. The original word-order of the title — Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn rather than the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo’s Fèngqīn yǎnglǎo — is reconstructed from the surviving Yuán Zhìzhèng print and supported by the present jicheng.tw witness.